REVIEW: The Saturdays – Living For the Weekend

11th October 2013

To paraphrase a recent PressPLAY favourite: A pop quintet’s so 1995, so hard for a blogger to find. A real girlband’s so 1999… well, you get the idea.

Which is why, despite the stick we get for this, we absolutely LOVE the Saturdays. Like an irrational love, the sort that turns people into remorseless Twitter trolls. Ever since Chasing Lights (which we would argue is one of the finest pop debuts of the last decade) they’ve delivered unapologetic pop of the highest quality and with utmost consistency, very rarely setting a foot wrong. While we’ll always resent the fact that the British public didn’t give All Fired Up the kudos it deserves, we’re glad people have liked them enough to keep them around. And just about learn their names.

Living For the Weekend (see what they did there?) brings with it their first UK #1 in the form of What About Us – an excellent start, despite Sean Paul. Of the other singles, Disco Love errs on the right side of bubblegum, and Gentleman pushes the boat out a little ahead of its time (ironic, given that it’s about 1999).

Leave A Light On is the first new track we hear, and while it won’t be up there in the Saturdays Top 10, it’s still a formidable continuation and the perfect precursor for Not Giving Up aka All Fired Up Mk II. Anyone with a lick of sense will make this the girls’ next single, for it is an absolute lesson in pop and BLOODY BRILLIANT. You heard it here first.

Lease My Love is a bit of an also-ran, and Anywhere With You is a leaf right out of the Katy Perry / Teenage Dream mould (you can do better, ladies). The Problem With Love and Don’t Let Me Dance Alone continue the dancefloor anthems in fierce fashion before the first ballad. The Sats do this so, so, so well on most occasions. You Don’t Have The Right is not one of them.

Bias aside, Living for the Weekend is (surprisingly to some) another strong album for the group. Call them manufactured, call them vacuous, call them whatever your want, the reality is that they continually release pop that even the flimsiest of Girls Aloud (Sarah Harding) would happily put their name to. More importantly, it gives us enough ammunition to defend them for yet another year and continue in our quest to make The Saturdays immortal.